The Qur'an and Wansbrough: Quranic pericopes and logias v. the canonized copy of the Qur'an

>Since 1972 the premises of this account seem to have been undermined.

This is far from the truth and I think that we might be talking about two different things here.

If we mean by the Qur'an the 1923-1924 Cairo Qur'an then the answer is the Qur'an must have been canonized in the 3rd century of Islam and not any earlier that does not mean that some logias and pericopes did not exist

What is most amazing about all of this is the fact that you will not find the Qur'an mentioned in the extant Arabic language literary sources (see Hoyland) until the Abbassids revolution and in the first islamic law book circa 750CE called Fiqh Akbar 1 the Qur'an is not mentioned or used as source of islamic law and why is that? and why would the penalty of al-zani wa al-zaniyya is stoning and not the Quranic whipping unless the Quranic material were not the source of islamic law early on or the Qur'an not yet canonized and to add insult to injury those Muhajiruun (this is what the invading Arabs called themselves early on) do not call themselves in the literary sources neither Muslims nor even Arabs and no mention of a Muhammad or his Qur'an and why is that?

This does not mean that there were no circulating logias and pericopes that were incorporated in the final canonized Qur'an and this is indeed what a lectionary or qeryana (Syriac) is all about

Now why would the Qur'an we have now have many words that have no clear meaning as in the case of ilaf and al-kalala and why do we have different readings for the same word as in MLK and why would it be that by the 3rd century of islam the masorites had no clue about the meaning of these words or how to read them unless the Quranic material pre-dates Muhammad (and for this see the allusion of ahl al-layka/ayka) and by 632CE no one had a clue about what these allsuions are all about

Or that the Qur'an was not canonized until the 3rd century of islam or at the time when the great Muslim and masoritic commentaries were written

But this detaches Muhammad from the Qur'an and the Qur'an from Arabia and it places Islam where it really belongs as a religion that emerged not from Arabia but from the civilized areas of the Middle East in Mesopotamia and the Syrian desert at the time of al-Khalifa al-Ma'moon

Let me give you an example the most celebrated grammatical mistake in the Qur'an is Q20:63 or in hadhan (sic) lasahiran and it should have been in hadhyne lasahiran

And this is written in the thrid century of islam and it is very clear that he is not sure how to read the word in and is in inna or inn or in or even inahu or inaha and is the word hadhan really dhan and is the word lasahiran is really ila sahiran or is the sentence is really innah hadhan lahuma sahiran and when nothing seems to work he tells us that some Arabs say in hadhan instead of in hadhyne

This very well means that al-Tabari was working with a copy of the Qur'an that was still unstable and that what we have here in his masoritic exegesis is more evidence that the Qur'an could not have been canonized until it is a stable book and why did it take that long unless the Qur'an was still viewed as a no more than a qeryana

I think that what is most striking about his exegesis is that it is very short because he did not have to deal with an unstable text and he tells us in hadhan lasahiran is the language of some Arabs and this is indeed what the islamic tradition now tells us and they also tell us that it must be recited as in hadhayne lasahiran but written as in hadhan lasahiran

So you can see the difference between the 9th century and later on and that Wansbrough is correct that the Qur'an could not have been canonized before the 9th century but this does not mean that Quranic logias and pericopes did not exist

i hope I helped

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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".